11
Summer arrived in full force. Cicadas cried from the cherry trees and in the evenings a pleasant breeze blew briefly as dusk began to arrive earlier each day.
At Doraharu, Sentaro was set to get through the summer period without any seasonal slump in business. Custom from school kids usually dropped off during the summer holidays, but that wasn’t happening this year. Quite the opposite, in fact, for the young girls continued to gather there every day at the counter seats. They came for dorayaki and cold drinks, and, to Sentaro’s surprise, Tokue’s presence also seemed to be a draw.
The group of girls who stopped by on their way home from cram school were in that category. They’d sit at the counter with their heads propped on their hands, and complain in voices loud enough for Tokue to hear from where she was sitting on her chair in the back.
‘Study is a pain in the neck,’ one might say.
And with a smile Tokue would reply from her seat, ‘Well then, why don’t you take a day off and have some fun?’
The girls wrinkled up their noses at that. ‘My parents would throw me out.’
‘Leave then. If you want to have fun.’
‘Seriously?’
‘I’m serious.’
‘Ooooh, are you telling us to be delinquents?’
Sentaro could see that while keeping her distance, Tokue appeared to wait for the right timing to deliver her comments. Whenever she heard their loud voices coming up the street, she would retreat dolefully to the seat in the back, but there would already be a vague smile on her face.
‘Home is sooo boring. I don’t wanna go back!’ wailed one girl.
‘Why don’t you find something to do with yourself?’ Tokue instantly responded.
‘Like what?’ the girl asked.
‘What about working here part-time?’ Tokue proposed.
‘Stop that now,’ Sentaro shot back from in front of the griddle. He was afraid she was only half-joking.
Granted these were school kids, but it was a problem for him that they stuck around two hours or so only for the price of one dorayaki. It was on the tip of his tongue to suggest they must be tired of chattering and how about getting a move on. He didn’t appreciate Tokue butting in and keeping their conversation going.
But ever since the day she had run the shop by herself, Sentaro had changed his tune. He let her do as she pleased. She was there on a pitifully low wage, and her presence in the shop was part of the reckoning. Which was not to say, however, that he thought it acceptable to lower all barriers between them and the customers. There was something else that bothered Sentaro: the expressions on customers’ faces when they caught sight of Tokue sitting in the back. These included the school girls. He had not missed the way some of them looked at her and suddenly lapsed into silence, or the momentary flash in their eyes.
There was one school girl who mostly came alone. Her name was Wakana, which was a nickname, and she never said how it originated. According to the other girls, there was a time when Wakana wore her hair short in a cute bob, just like the well-known cartoon character Wakame-chan, so maybe that explained it. But after court proceedings and her parents’ divorce, neither Wakana’s personality nor her hairstyle had ever been the same, apparently.
Wakana was not a talkative girl. She would sit and eat dorayaki while staring into the kitchen with dewy eyes. That gaze bothered Sentaro, who sometimes asked – unusually for him – if she was all right.
But Wakana always kept quiet, even when Sentaro spoke to her. It was only after Tokue began giving her the misshapen reject dorayaki that she started to speak of her own accord. She mentioned that she lived with just her mother, who worked at night, that money was tight, and that she would come home after school to find her mother’s boyfriend’s underwear lying about the house.
Tokue sometimes gave reject dorayaki to the other girls too when they chatted with her. She would take the pancakes that Sentaro had spoiled during cooking, put sweet bean paste or cream in them, and give them to the girls, saying, ‘This is on the house.’
Sentaro did not like her doing this. He tried to tell her so indirectly but she dismissed him. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ she said. ‘Better than throwing them away.’
Wakana said the rejects tasted better than the standard dorayaki. This spurred Tokue on to try honey and other fillings. It was after polishing off one of these experiments one day that Wakana finally brought up the so-far-unmentioned.
‘Tokue, what happened to your fingers?’
Sentaro turned around to see Tokue, who was seated, fold her hands in an attempt to hide her fingers.
‘Oh, this. When I was a girl I got sick and my fingers stayed crooked.’
‘What kind of sickness?’
He saw her expression harden.
‘An awful sickness,’ was all she said.
Wakana nodded and said nothing more. She bit into her remaining dorayaki and chewed without comment, as if to cover the awkwardness of the moment. To Sentaro her chewing sounded like a wordless conversation between Tokue and Wakana.
From that day on Wakana did not come to Doraharu any more.
Tokue often chatted about the students while she did the washing-up. She noted how so-and-so had recently started to smile, so things must be better at home. Or how she thought somebody else probably had a broken heart because she’d seen the girl’s friends consoling her. The things people said in that situation never changed with the times, she observed. Another girl had shown Tokue her new mobile phone, which was apparently the very latest, so Sentaro probably hadn’t seen one yet either, she said. What kind of world will it be in the future now that those things are an inseparable part of children’s lives, she wondered.
Tokue also mentioned Wakana. ‘She hasn’t been by recently,’ she said one day.
Sentaro was scraping the burnt crumbs off the griddle. ‘You mean that rude girl?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘She sprung that question about your fingers on you, didn’t she?’
‘You were the same,’ Tokue stated.
‘It was my job to say that. I had to ask at least once.’
‘But…that’s how it is.’
‘Huh?’ Sentaro looked confused.
‘I sometimes think…well, what of it?’
Sentaro raised his eyes from the griddle to look at Tokue, still not understanding.
‘Only adults look while pretending not to. Is that better? Or is it better to ask straight out?’
‘Ah, difficult question.’
‘I could tell Wakana had been wondering about my fingers for a while. She only asked because she wanted to know me better.’
‘You think so?’
‘Yes, so don’t pick on that girl or talk about her like that.’
‘What’s this? Now you’re angry at me?’
Tokue smiled and Sentaro relaxed slightly. ‘You like children, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Me, I get uptight when they come here in groups.’
‘I wanted to be a teacher, you know.’
‘Primary school?’
‘That would’ve been all right, but mostly I wanted to teach Japanese at middle school. I wanted to study, you know.’
‘I guess things were hard after the war, the country was poor.’ Instinctively Sentaro tried to anticipate Tokue, and create a space for her words.
‘Everybody was poor, not just my family.’
‘Why a Japanese teacher?’ Sentaro kept the questions coming, trying to mend things.
‘I liked poetry. I used to read poetry when I was young. Like Heine and Hakushu Kitahara and other poets, in books I found in my older brother’s room.’
‘Goodness, Tokue. You’re full of surprises.’
‘Reading and imagining things was about the only pleasure we had in those days. I loved using my imagination. That’s why I thought it interesting you wanted to be a writer.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
‘But don’t you still have dre
ams from the past? I never thought I’d get the chance in this life to talk with sweet young girls like that. That’s why I’m so happy.’
‘By sweet, you mean those girls that come here?’
‘Yes, I do. I never got to be a teacher, but now I can enjoy a fraction of what it might’ve been like. Thank you, for giving me the chance to meet those girls.’
‘Get on with you. I’m the one who’s being helped.’
As he scrubbed the griddle with a scouring brush, Sentaro silently prayed for Wakana to show her face again soon.
12
Summer holidays came to an end and the girls who gathered at Doraharu began appearing in their school uniforms again. The days were still hot and humid, but as evening drew near, the air cooled considerably. Faded leaves rustled in the wind and fell one by one to the footpath outside the shop.
Sentaro had finished cleaning inside and was removing dead leaves from the shutter grooves when he heard a voice behind him. ‘Sorry to come at this late hour.’ It was his boss, the owner.
‘Oh,’ he uttered in surprise, ‘Madam.’
He ushered her inside to a counter seat. Sentaro was rattled by this unscheduled visit, and searched his mind, trying to think why she might be here. They met every week for her to check the books and bank transfers – sometimes at the shop and sometimes at her home – but it was always prearranged. She was surprisingly busy with all her medical appointments. Sentaro, too, was always working, so it wasn’t as if he had a lot of time either. Any business matters were therefore usually discussed out of shop hours when there were no customers, and she always telephoned the day before. It suited Sentaro to have this tacit understanding as it gave him time to get the books in order and clean before she came. Most importantly, however, he could make sure that Tokue was not around.
So why, now, all of a sudden…? Sentaro had a bad feeling. Tokue had been in the shop just a short while before, doing the washing-up. Had the owner arrived an hour earlier they would have run into each other.
She put her stick on the counter. ‘Tea please, Sentaro,’ she said, pointing to the cups. He put the kettle on the stove.
‘Sorry to come when you’re busy.’
‘Not at all. What’s up?’
Her eyes darted about the interior then abruptly she pursed her lips and looked Sentaro in the eye.
‘There are rumours,’ she began, ‘about someone who works here.’
‘Oh, that would be Tokue.’
‘Tokue – is that her name?’
The moment Sentaro had feared was finally here. He looked away and put his fingers on the kettle handle.
‘I heard about it from somebody. Is it true her hands are crippled?’
Sentaro closed his eyes once before speaking. ‘Err, a little bit…Is that a problem?’
‘And is her face paralysed as well?’
Sentaro gave her a puzzled look.
‘My friend says – I’m sorry, but this is not good – my friend says it looks like leprosy.’
‘Leprosy?’
‘Nowadays they call it Hansen’s disease.’
‘Hansen’s disease…’ Sentaro felt the blood drain from his face.
‘Yes, and that got me worried. Actually, I came by here an hour ago and watched from the road.’
‘Why’d you do that? You could’ve come inside and met Tokue directly.’
She nodded and gave Sentaro a steely look. ‘That wouldn’t be very good for you, would it, Sentaro? Haven’t you been sneaking about up to now, making sure I didn’t meet her?’
‘Huh? No…what do you mean?’
The kettle vibrated under his hand as the water approached the boil. Inside he felt even more turbulent.
‘I couldn’t see very well, but there was definitely something wrong with that woman’s hands.’
‘Not so much that you notice it.’
‘The customers notice. It’s not good for the shop.’
‘Hah…’
‘If there’s something you’re not telling me, spit it out.’
‘That’s not…I just want to say this shop has been turned around because of Tokue’s bean paste. She has fifty years’ experience of making it.’
Sentaro didn’t wait for the kettle to come to the boil. He poured water into the teapot.
‘She’s popular with the young people too.’
‘Oh really. She obviously works hard.’
‘Yes. She does a good job.’
‘How old is this person?’
‘In her seventies,’ Sentaro answered, pouring tea into a cup, ‘but she’s very good for her age.’ He smiled at the owner.
‘About the same age as me,’ she said, taking the cup. ‘Ugh!’ she drew a sharp breath.
‘What is it?’
‘Did she use this cup too?’
He nodded.
‘They say it’s rarely catching…Sentaro, this is serious. What if it gets out that an eating establishment is employing a leprosy patient?’
‘But…Tokue got sick when she was a girl, and her fingers went like that as a side effect. She’s been cured for a long time now.’
‘She would say that, wouldn’t she? Did you know, Sentaro, that in severe cases of leprosy the fingers drop off?’
‘Tokue has all her fingers.’
‘Where does she live? That woman.’
Sentaro turned away and put a hand against his chest, as if to still the turmoil. The notebook in which Tokue had written her address was on a shelf in the kitchen. He found it and opened it up for the owner to see. She looked at the writing, went still and closed her eyes.
‘What is it?’
‘This is where they keep the lepers.’ Her voice was a whisper though no one else was present. ‘There’s a sanatorium.’
Sentaro put both hands on the countertop. In silence, he looked at the address Tokue had written. So that was it. That’s why it had triggered something the first time he saw it. At the time he couldn’t figure out why, but now it was mentioned he remembered that he’d heard rumours about this district before, because of the sanatorium.
‘This writing is all crooked.’
‘But— She says she’s cured.’
‘I don’t know about now, Sentaro, but people used to get put in isolation for life when they got that disease. I saw them when I was a girl, hanging around the temple. Their faces looked dreadful – like monsters. The public-health authorities used to disinfect any place they’d been.’
‘But madam…’ Sentaro picked up the cup that she had pushed back towards him and took it over to the sink. ‘I know I’ve said it already, but it’s because of Tokue this place is making a profit at last. She comes here early and makes bean paste for me.’
The owner looked shrewdly at the copper bean pot sitting on the gas cooker and the bowl with adzuki beans soaking in it.
‘I can see that. But if the person who informed me starts talking to others, we’re done for. What if somebody around here got leprosy and this shop was the source of infection?’
‘Who told you what, exactly?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’ She clamped her lips and stared at Sentaro.
‘Think what will happen if she stays here. What if you catch it too?’
Sentaro could only blink in reply. He turned to look at the soaking beans.
‘In any case…Tokue, is it? You have to—’ She broke off, then continued to wind up her case. ‘You can pay her off – give her a good sum – but you have to let her go. If she doesn’t, this place will fold.’
‘But what will I do for bean paste?’
‘You can make it, can’t you? You must’ve learned by now if you’ve been making it with her.’
Had he? Sentaro was not confident. He was still continually amazed by Tokue’s attitude towards the beans. At a deep level, she was doing something very different to him.
‘Well, Sentaro? Can’t you make the bean paste yourself?’
‘That’s not the problem.’
; ‘What, then?’
‘The thing is, Tokue and I have made this shop profitable together. We even get queues sometimes. There’re kids who depend on her, too. Is that the kind of person you want me to fire?’
‘I don’t like having to say this either, you know. But it can’t be helped. This is a disease we’re talking about. A very serious one. And at least one person has already noticed.’
Sentaro could see she was not going to budge. Though he did not refuse to obey her outright, he was careful to say, ‘Please give me some time.’
The owner looked annoyed. ‘You promised to let me be there when you interviewed casual workers,’ she said insistently, and pointed to a corner of the kitchen. ‘Give me that,’ she said, thrusting her chin in the direction of the alcohol sterilizing spray for kitchen use.
Sentaro passed it over and she sprayed it on her hands. Fine beads of alcohol solution hung in the air, and floated over to the beans Tokue had left soaking.
‘I understand how you might feel. I don’t enjoy saying this. But sacrifices are sometimes necessary. My husband entrusted this shop to you. You’re in charge of it so I want you to do the job properly and not let your emotions carry you away. And besides…’ she paused, ‘don’t you still owe us money?’
Sentaro lowered his eyes and said nothing. He didn’t lift his face again until she had gone.
That night Sentaro could not sleep.
Unusually for him, he went to bed without a drink, and stared up at the dark ceiling, his mind in a whirl. After a while he reached the conclusion that he knew nothing about Hansen’s disease and pushed back the covers, since he couldn’t sleep. Switching on the light at the desk, he started up an ancient, dust-covered computer for the first time in a while and connected it to the internet with an analogue cable that had also been lying around disused. Once it was set up he typed ‘hansens disease’ into a search engine.
A list of article titles appeared on the screen. Sentaro stared at the monitor, not knowing where to start. All he knew was that he did not want to look at shocking photographs of patients. Girding himself to get on with it, he started off by reading through all the titles in order. The content seemed widely varied: historical accounts of the illness, medical explanations, the bittersweet victories and struggles of former patients who had fought for the repeal of the Leprosy Prevention Act, digests from major newspapers, and relevant pages on the Ministry of Health website.
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